


Behind the Bar

by penumbria



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e19 Dead Man Talking, Episode: s03e24 Hiatus Part II, M/M, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 19:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8813578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penumbria/pseuds/penumbria
Summary: Jimmy works behind the bar at Oscar's, a gay bar, to put himself through medical school. He meets all kinds of men and learns some of their stories.





	1. Behind the Bar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sexycazzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexycazzy/gifts).



> I do not own NCIS.  
> Thanks to my wonderful beta - lanalucy.
> 
> Merry Christmas from Santa, I hope this gift is what you wanted! :)

 

**Chapter One**

Jimmy Palmer stood behind the solid oak bar and polished the cocktail glasses as he prepared for the night’s rush. He was working part time as a bartender at Oscar’s, a discreet, members-only, gay bar and club in Georgetown, to put himself through medical school.

Oscar’s was a fairly classy establishment, catering to both the closeted and the careful, the elite movers and shakers of Washington, along with the more unknown members of society who needed or wanted the discretion the club provided. As long as they could afford the membership dues and had a connection to a current member for an invite, of course. _And_ of course they had to keep the highest hard and fast rule of the club: Who you see and meet at Oscar’s, you don’t know outside Oscar’s. Discretion - and silence - were the watchword here.

Jimmy had to go through an extensive background check to even get an interview for a job. Then he had to provide five references. Each reference was investigated as well to make sure they were legitimate before he was officially hired. He understood the caution. In the ten months he had been working the bar, he had seen some famous - and very surprising - faces come through the door. To the uninitiated, Oscar’s was an old-fashioned gentleman’s club, harking back to the days of brandy and cigars after dinner, while the women had tea and gossip in another room. Very Victorian. Or even earlier.

Over the months, Jimmy had gotten to know a number of the patrons to some extent. For a few it was simply by their drink order, like the man seated at the table in the back by the billiard room doorway. Jimmy didn’t recognize him as a famous or newsworthy face, but he came in at least three times a week and ordered a gin and tonic with a cherry. He nursed the drink for an hour or so while he read a book, then he ordered two Gibson martinis over the next half hour. When the second was gone, the man ordered an Irish coffee with heavy whip cream from the bar and an order of steak fries from the grill area of the club. He always arrived around four-thirty in the afternoon and left around eight. He never socialized, and he always had a book with him - various hardbacks with leather covers and golden end papers which he read except when he was eating his fries. Once the food arrived, the day's book was put away in his satchel and he took out a mass market paperback, almost always a bodice ripper romance.

Then there was the elderly man who came in every Tuesday and Thursday at six fifteen, like clockwork. He was in his seventies and always sat at the end of the bar and people-watched. He ordered one of three drinks each visit, in rotation: a Guinness, a whiskey sour, and a Sex on the Beach. He always snorted when people questioned the last, telling them in his deep bass voice that he was seventy-four years old and had lived his life by society’s standards. If he wanted to order a more flaming drink now, then he could and they could have their masculine drink orders. He liked the combination and they could shove off and mind their own business. He would end with the fact that it wasn’t like anyone here didn’t know he was gay and trying to conform to a heteronormative society in this, the one truly safe space in the damned city of the devils, was asinine. And while he liked ass, he wasn’t willing to act like one here.

Jimmy loved the different characters who showed up at Oscar’s. They really did run the gamut, from the nearly flaming queens who wore makeup and heels completely unashamedly to the everyday men who just allowed themselves to be open here to the closeted politicians who shed their masks as soon as the door closed behind them and the weight of their true selves was lifted from their shoulders. It gratified the young man to a great degree.

Jimmy himself didn’t like to label people in pretty little boxes. He'd had a girlfriend he truly loved when he was in high school and the sex was good. They broke up before graduation, mutually. In college, Jimmy had two lovers, one male, one female, and again the sex was good with both. He just didn’t feel attracted to people unless he really knew them. He could appreciate an attractive person and realize that they were hot or sexy but unless he was close to them, he just wasn’t really interested. He didn’t care what equipment they had, he was attracted to the people themselves, not the skin they wore. Most people would call him bisexual. He didn't care really. Jimmy felt he knew who he was and that was enough for him. But all the same, he wasn't “out” in the world. He didn’t exactly hide himself but he didn’t advertise either. He felt that unless he wanted in their pants, it wasn’t anyone’s business where he wanted to stick his cock.

And speaking of fun customers, two favorites walked into the bar area as Jimmy stacked the last cleaned and buffed glass. They were regular guys, a couple, Chris and Tony, who came in two or three times a month. Sometimes it was more often and one month - September - he hadn’t seen them at all. He knew their jobs took them out of town sometimes and kept them very busy the rest of the time. But they always just seemed to relax and let go when they came to Oscar’s'. Tony always started the night almost manic and gradually lowered the mask and turned down to mellow and happy. The other, Chris, started out as very quiet and somewhat morose and as Tony calmed down, he turned it up and began to joke and laugh. It was something Jimmy loved to see: the effect Oscar’s had on the men who came to relax.

Chris and Tony always tipped very well and were never snobby and never treated Jimmy like “the help” even though Jimmy could tell that Tony, at least, came from money. It was in the way he wore his suits and interacted with others. Some of the patrons of Oscar’s were assholes and acted like the workers were part of the furniture. Mostly it was the ones who were new to money, but occasionally an old money face would be a complete bastard, as well. But never Tony.

Chris was wonderful as well, kind and considerate. He never failed to ask how school was going. And he really wanted to know. If it wasn’t busy and Jimmy tried to just answer with a brief, “Good, thanks,” Chris would press and press, almost interrogating Jimmy until he got a real answer, not just a polite one.

The two men were so obviously deeply in love with one another. Jimmy envied them but loved to watch them interact. They weren’t sappy or mushy but just radiated the care they had for one another. It was beautiful.


	2. A Bartender's Ear - And Shoulder

**Chapter Two**

Shortly before Jimmy’s one year anniversary as a bartender at Oscar’s, in late April, Tony came in alone, something he had never done before. He looked odd, his face set in hard lines, almost a physical mask, not like his normal manic mask or his more casual real look as he relaxed. His eyes were red and his jaw was clenched tight.

The older man took a seat at the end of the bar, the singular spot that was the only stool on the other side of the pass-through from behind the bar to the main floor. It was not a desirable spot as it was the most isolated of those at the bar itself.

The room wasn’t busy; it was earlier by several hours than Tony typically arrived, so Jimmy was able to approach as soon as the man took his seat. Tony sighed lightly and spoke, no laughter in his voice, just a raspy harsh near bark, which taken with his red eyes told a tale of its own. “Bourbon. Triple. Straight. The good stuff. Black Maple Hill. Unless you’ve got Pappy. And keep it coming.” 

Jimmy poured the first triple of the Black Maple and placed it in front of Tony. He grabbed it and downed it in two gulps, placed it back on the bar and gestured to it with his fingers. Jimmy refilled the tumbler and it disappeared just as fast as the first. As Tony gestured, Jimmy again refilled the glass and watched as the other man drank it down, so fast he obviously was barely even tasting the high priced liquor. When he put the glass down on the bar once more, this time Tony looked at Jimmy and said, “Just leave the bottle, kid.”

Jimmy held onto it and poured Tony a single this time. “Try tasting it this time. What’s the point of ordering the good stuff if you hack it back like it’s a shot of tequila?”

Tony frowned at the glass, then at Jimmy, then at the glass, back and forth, but he did pick it up and sip more slowly. “I hate the taste of the stuff but I figured it was tradition, ya know. Modeling two functional alcoholics with tragic love stories. I just want to forget, just let go for a while, ya know, Jim-Jimmy-Jim-Bob-Boy.”

Jimmy gave the older man with a sad look. “How about you have some coffee and something to eat? I worked the early shift tonight and it’s nearly time for me to get off. Let me lend a shoulder, or at least an ear. I’m good at it. Bartender, you know?”

Tony laughed, the sound watery and bitter. “I’ve never been good at - anything, really, not since college and never at picking role models. But, you’re not wrong. I - I need an ear. Everyone at work knows what happened but no one knows what it meant. To me.” He looked solemnly at Jimmy, tears in his eyes that seemingly refused to spill over. “Chris - he’s dead. Shot and - oh, god, butchered, like, like, oh god. And everyone thinks we were just friendly acquaintances, co-workers who were on the same work baseball team. We’re - Chris - we are -  _ were  _ \- I am and he was in the closet because - we’re - God, he was a federal agent. Killed in the line of duty. And I - my boss won’t even give me time off for the funeral, I - I -” Tony started to shake and hyperventilate. 

Jimmy looked over his shoulder and waved at the other bartender who had started his shift half an hour before. The man nodded his understanding that Jimmy was going to help Tony and was off shift. Jimmy raised the pass through and lowered it behind him as he placed a hand on Tony’s arm. It seemed to be just what the other man needed as he nearly fell into Jimmy. He hung off of the younger man as they wended their way down a small hallway and into one of the more private recessed alcoves. Tony broke down, sobbing, his shoulders heaving, but his face remaining dry and the noise stifled and gradually becoming totally soundless though the body under Jimmy's arms still shook with the force of the grief pouring from the lost man.

Eventually, Tony’s body stilled and he sat up, looking away from the younger man, his face bright red. “Sorry. That was - you didn’t need to see that - I’m a real wimp sometimes. My old man always told me what a disappointment I was.”

Jimmy shook his head and laid a hand on Tony’s on the table. “Then he was the disappointment. Grief is not unhealthy, the opposite, really. And you certainly have a reason. Chris was a great guy, and if no one knows about the two of you -”

Tony snarled, “I’m not about to out him after he’s gone just to make myself feel better. Assuming anyone would even believe me. They’d probably say I was trying to make it all about me when it should be about Chris and my boss who was his friend for years before I even met them. Or trying to get the heat off of me for my stupidity in the case - I was so lost, ya know. I overcompensated. I was terrified people would see, would know after I saw him, his body, I - my mask - God, I’m an idiot. I flirted with this woman, a person of interest and it turned out she was the killer and she kissed me and I didn’t know and then it came out that - we didn’t suspect her really because the killer was a guy and it turned out that she was in the process of becoming she. She had been he. And still was, pre-op, and my co-workers think it's funny that I tongued a guy and that my horrified reaction was hilarious, not understanding that I inadvertently kissed Chris’ murderer. Even if I wasn’t - if - I was going to ask him to move in, ya know. Get a place together, a house, a duplex so it would seem we were at two different addresses, but we could put in a door, could have put in a door and lived together with no one knowing. But they all think it is the most hilarious thing. But even if I didn’t love Chris, they all know we were friends and it isn’t remotely funny that I kissed the person who viciously murdered him and butchered him.”

Jimmy was shocked at the drunken babble spilling from the grieving man but he refused to judge him. Tony was in an almost unbearably tough place and he needed support. Jimmy could understand how he must have felt so alone and like he was on quicksand, especially if he had seen Chris’ body, if he had worked the case of his lover’s murder. Jimmy was sure Tony had been slipping from extremes, worried his friends would see through to his deep grief, more than a simple co-worker's death would engender.

Jimmy placed his hand on Tony’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Anything you need, Tony. You’re a good man and you need to actually grieve and not bury it under a night of alcoholic blankness. Or a manic mask that leads you to overcompensate, as you put it, at work. Oscar’s is a safe place, Tony. You can be yourself here. The man who loved Chris and was loved by him in return. Let us help you. It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human.”

Tony sniffed and blinked. “I - I - Thanks. No one ever - I - I always wear a mask. Chris called me on it not long after we met. He saw right through me. And now, there’s no one who knows me.  The real me. Not the joker, the playboy womanizer, the movie buff. Just the man who loved Chris Pacci.”

“You can talk to me, Tony. Anytime. I know this is just a club and I’m just a bartender but I do care about you. So do other people here. Chris brought you here, didn’t he?”

Tony nodded. “I never - I would have never - no, I wouldn't have found this place on my own. No one knew - knows - that I would be a candidate. Only Chris.”

Jimmy smiled. “He knew this place was what you needed. Not just when he was here with you but in your life overall.”

Tony smiled with a bitter twist to his lips. “He always told me I didn’t need to wait for him to come here with me if I wanted to come. I always felt a bit - awkward at the idea but today - I just needed to drop the mask. Any other bar or club, I could have run into someone I knew from work and wouldn’t be able to show how much - I just wanted to be myself and grieve for my murdered lover, ya know.”

“And you can, Tony. Lots of people here have understanding of how hard wearing masks and hiding half of your life can be. Oscar’s is a place where you can just be Tony. No need to hide, to pretend. You know that. So believe it. Chris would want you to accept help. He wouldn’t want you to lose yourself because no one knew the real you. Let us know. It has nothing to do with jobs or last names or anything like that. Those are just the trappings, another mask. I’m Jimmy, the bartender who’s in med school. But that’s just my job, my career path. I’m a nerd, I love spy films and novels, I listen to techno and dance to disco and play the guitar, mostly jazz. I hate sitcoms and modern dance. I like to talk and usually stumble over my words when I’m excited and tend to make inappropriate jokes when I am feeling intimidated. That’s Jimmy. Let us meet Tony. Let us help him with his great loss. Reach out and we’ll catch you.”

“I - I’ll try but -”

Jimmy just smiled and let it lie. He knew Tony would do what he needed, would learn to be himself and accept that Oscar’s was the place he could lose the masks, even without Chris’ support. He would get support from others, Jimmy prominently among them.


	3. Epilogue - Stirring the Wok

**Epilogue**

Jimmy stood at the counter, setting out the ingredients needed for the meal. The wok was on the burner, ready to receive the beef stir fry once Jimmy was fully prepared. It was an easy meal, even though he was making it from scratch.

As he placed the final spice on the counter, Jimmy heard the door open and glanced over his shoulder, seeing through the open floor plan to the front of the apartment. Tony draped his suit jacket over the back of the sofa and Jimmy watched as he slid his gun from the shoulder holster and into the gun safe before walking toward the kitchen. 

Jimmy leaned against the breakfast bar as Tony slumped onto the bar stool on the other side. “Another long day?”

Tony just nodded. 

“Go take a shower, use some of that soap with the lavender oil in it, and by the time you’re done, I’ll have dinner ready.”

Tony smiled. “You’re too much sometimes, Jim.”

Jimmy shook his head. “You just aren’t used to letting someone else take care of you. Even now.”

Tony sighed deeply. “Thank you, Mr Palmer.”

Jimmy laughed. “You don’t have the accent quite right. Go clean up.”

As Tony headed to his shower, Jimmy turned to the stove and began making the stir fry. It wasn’t quite a mindless task but it wasn’t rocket science and he let his mind drift a bit, thinking over everything that had been happening. Tony really needed pampering and Jimmy tried to help as much as the older man would let him.

When the stir fry was done, Jimmy plated two portions, got a couple of beers from the fridge, and took them to the table in the dining room area. As he set out the napkins and chopsticks, Tony came in and sat down, dressed in a lightweight robe with his hair damp.

“This is delicious as always, Jim.”

“Thanks, Tony. I decided on Asian tonight since I wanted it to be ready quick and I knew you wouldn’t want to cook any yourself, so Italian was out.”

“You are just - I still don’t get why you’re so good to me.” He wiped his mouth with the napkin and laid his chopsticks across his empty plate. “No one else is.”

“You are a good man and most everyone else have their heads up their asses lately. Did McGee leave early again?”

Tony nodded. “Yeah. Just half an hour but -”

Jimmy sighed. “And I bet he still hasn’t done the paperwork for his new position, has he?”

Tony closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Not most of it. He doesn’t think it's Senior Field Agent paperwork. He thinks I’m trying to get him to do some of  _ my  _ paperwork and  _ he  _ has a life outside of work. I should be used to it. It isn’t like Gibbs did all of his paperwork.”

“Right, but now you’re responsible for the paperwork that Gibbs  _ did _ do, the Team Lead paperwork you have been doing for years,  _ and  _ at least half? Two thirds? More? Of the Senior Field Agent paperwork. Not to mention the other crap.”

Tony leaned back and groaned. “I - I just don’t understand them. I miss Gibbs, too. It was shitty the way he left but it isn’t like I could have stopped him. And within a week, they stopped giving one hundred percent to the job. Ziva comes in late, McGee leaves early and at least three times has taken a two hour lunch. Their reports are sloppy. And when I kick them back to them, they take their time fixing them. And they don’t - they aren’t putting their best into the job anymore even beyond paperwork. I’m worried, Jim. We’re solving cases but they aren’t listening to me. Not as much as they should. I’m - I worry that we’re missing things, I just don't have the time to do my work and all of theirs, too. What if we get things wrong? Gibbs left because of bureaucratic indifference to life, what if that's happening here because everyone is still so on edge with the transition? If I wasn’t pretty sure that Gibbs was gonna get over his grief, or shove it back in its box, and get bored lounging on the beach with Franks, I’d do something drastic.”

“Talk it out, Tony.” Jimmy stood behind Tony and began rubbing his shoulders and neck.

“I am starting to hate my job, Jimmy. I’m putting in eight hours, coming home to grab a meal and a shower, and heading back to the office for at least another three to five hours to fix paperwork. Or just get it done in the first place. I can lead a team, Jim. Just, I’m not sure NCIS is the place to do it. They never did see through the masks I wear, not even enough to realize it  _ is  _ a mask. The only one who ever did, who didn’t have a hint of it thanks to knowing my other side first, was Chris. I mean, I don’t want anyone to know I’m gay. I’m out to you and at Oscar’s and that’s enough. But NCIS is so hard right now. Everyone is grieving Gibbs, McGee and Ziva don’t take me seriously as a boss, Ducky is just angry and wrapped up in his own head, and Abby - God, I love the girl but the shrine is more than ridiculous and if she whines once more about me figuring out how to get Gibbs back and slaps a trainee sticker on me! Gibbs will be back when he’s ready. And he gave me the team. He trained me for it since he hired me from Baltimore. I think - sometimes I hate it but I can’t help it - if Gibbs hadn’t survived the explosion - if he had died on impact or during the operation - I think everyone would be more settled. And that’s horrible, I know it but I can’t help it, Jimmy. The way he left...”

Jimmy stroked Tony’s upper arms and dug his fingers into the knots in the muscles. “He abandoned you. He was the boss. In a way, the father of your little dysfunctional family. And he just walked away from you all. You’re right in that if he had died, it would have been easier in some ways. There would have been closure. But no one is sure he isn’t going to just show back up one day and take the team back. It's clear in how everyone is acting, from Doctor Mallard to Abby to McGee and Ziva to the Director. And most especially, to you. You’re acting like this is temporary, like you expect to be demoted later. Like you’re the interim lead. And they’re reflecting that back at you. You’re all insecure in your new dynamic.”

Tony spun around and looked Jimmy in the eyes. “So, what am I supposed to do?”

“It’s your call, Tony. I’m not trying to tell you how to run the team. But you’re all stuck in various stages of grief, mostly denial, though you’re channeling some anger. And so is Doctor Mallard. But if you really want to show that you  _ are _ the Team Lead, believe it yourself, first. Don't try to channel Agent Gibbs. Be Agent DiNozzo. Do things your way when you think it works better. You’re Tony. Be Tony. That’s all you can ever do.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been a great ride. Happy Holidays!
> 
> Love from Santa


End file.
